Gerry Harvey and Solomon Lew’s campaign, also backed by the Myer group, to have GST collected on all Internet purchases from overseas, including those costing under $1000, appears to be foundering rapidly, with a major group of retailers now actively opposing the move.
I like comparing traffic between competitor websites. This time, let’s compare MySpace and Facebook. Talk about inverse traffic:
Bye bye MySpace.
As I pack my stuff for a short getaway over the New Years I’ll leave this bunch of links to articles I was reading just before Christmas. Watch out 2011! Some new ideas coming your way!
Found this site: http://www.yodel.com.au/ It’s a company focused on reselling Google Ads. It’s not SEO, its SEM. Just think, a decade ago SEO nor SEM existed. One thing I’d be watching closely is how Facebook moves in the future as more people spend more time on social networking websites. But there will always be space for search engines as people use them to find solutions instantly rather than the referral – “Hey Look at this!” nature of Facebook.
I’ll be looking at the SEO business again next year along with a business partner.
ShoppyBag.com came from nowhere in November 2010. Just two months ago! Where the hell did they come from and how did they reach an Alexa rank of 21,015 instantly?
Its a social shopping network where you invite friends… what are they doing right which made them explode in growth?!
It says on their site:
ShoppyBag is a new way to shop with friends. See what your friends are shopping for, get new style ideas & share awesome finds with each other! Shopping is always more fun with friends, and now you can do it whenever you want. ShoppyBag is free to join, but is by invite only. Ask a friend to invite you.
They’ve been around with negligible traffic, but for some reason exploded on November. They make money from affiliate marketing.
Does anyone know why their traffic exploded? What did they do differently in November? There seems to be a few complaints about their emails? Perhaps that’s when they opened up their site to send out multiple emails?
Babelfish for the iPhone. Amazing.
• Strong family role models, particularly grandparents. Regular contact with extended family tended to reinforce the value systems of earlier generations.
• A commitment to family time — meals together, house and yard work, school assignments, or vacations, present an opportunity to nourish a child’s identity and pass along values.
• The role of a prosperous family business in instilling a work ethic in younger generations, and in keeping those young people close to home.
• A healthy respect for money and hard work, and an awareness that pursuing an engaging occupation and achieving one’s goals are vital to well-being.
• Emphasis on philanthropy, volunteerism and job creation. In almost every case, respondent families demonstrated a strong commitment to the welfare of others and worked to instill a social conscience in succeeding generations.
• Detachment from the urge to keep up with the Gettys. Several families bucked societal trends, shunning video games, excess consumption and exclusivity linked to high-income people.
• A willingness to let children find their own way, take responsibility, make their own choices regarding education and career, and learn life’s sometimes painful lessons.
Involved in this fund are:
Our venture didn’t get into startmate but we did get some good feedback from some of the mentors. The shortlist of the companies which got in are here.
IRLgaming, Chorus, Bugherd, Noosbox and another unnamed company trumped the field of 86 applicants to participate in the first-round of the Startmate program, which was founded earlier this year by a collection of Aussies who have successfully commercialised businesses in Australia and the United States.
As his company’s RetailMeNot site was snapped up by emerging US media player WhaleShark Media for around AU$90 million, Guy King and co-founder Bevan Clark became two of Australia’s newest multimillionaires.
Well that’s it! See you on the other side.
The harder I work, the luckier I get.Samuel Goldwyn
I first heard this quote while I was watching this Dragons Den Road To Riches video about Jim Treliving:
I was listening to the 2GB (a Sydney Talkback Radio Station) over the Christmas break and I heard an advertisement for a website called StreetCorner. Curious, I went and checked it out.
It turns out StreetCorner.com.au is a community website which encourages users to submit local stories and news, events, classifieds as well as the usual local business listings. The whole website is focused solely on Sydney.
It felt like I was reading an online version of my local newspaper – an imitation of TrueLocal which is owned by Newscorp via News Interactive Pty Ltd. StreetCorner is owned by Macquarie Media Network Pty Ltd (Macquarie Radio Network), which also owns 2GB, on which the radio advertisement was broadcast.
Traffic isn’t too large, Alexa ranks it at 525,849 globally or 21,660 for local Australian traffic. Compare that to TrueLocal which is ar 9,713 globally or 112 for Aussie traffic. How does it make money? Advertising and premium listings.
The focus seems more on news and building a local online community while also trying to build a directory and listings. A good idea? Sure. A monetizable business model online, perhaps not for now – not until they manage to gain momentum with traffic numbers.
Personally I think they should have focused on one thing rather than be all things to all people. Much like CustomerUnderground.com which has a focus on finding the best local businesses and reviewing them. They are focused in what they do and are limiting their growth by targetting certain areas of Sydney, namely the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney.
For now, there are no other websites in this category which come close to the power of local business reviews than TrueLocal and Google Places.
If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the seas.Antoine de Saint-Exupery
I found this quote about leading and inspiring people while reading the SMH this weekend. The original article was about WikiLeaks and Julian Assange.
One of these can be found in another favourite piece of writing, this time by the World War II pilot and author of The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupery. The quote, used by Assange to sign many of his emails, was this: “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the seas.”
The quote suggests that if you can show people why something is important, they will work to achieve that goal far more effectively than if you just tell them to tick off items on a banal to-do list. Large corporations spend hundreds of thousands of dollars every year trying to drum that message into their executives in high-end training courses. Assange knew it instinctively.
This Dealbook NYTines article raises the question if there is another bubble happening in Silicon Valley.
These days in Silicon Valley, a billion dollars seems downright quaint. The enthusiasm for social networking and mobile apps has venture capitalists clamoring to give money to young companies.
The exuberance has given rise to an elite club of start-ups — all younger than seven years and all worth billions. Successive investments in Twitter have reportedly increased its value 33 percent, to $4 billion, while Zynga, creator of the popular Facebook game FarmVille, is worth more than $5 billion.
Google was willing to pay $6 billon for Groupon, an online coupon company that was valued at $1.35 billion only eight months ago. And Groupon was willing to reject the bid on Friday evening, presumably because it could sell for even more money later.
Less than a decade after the dot-com bust taught Wall Street and Silicon Valley investors that what goes up does not keep going up forever, a growing number of entrepreneurs and a few venture capitalists are beginning to wonder if investments in tech start-ups are headed toward another big bust.
The chief evidence, according to industry experts and analysts, is the way venture capitalists and established companies are clamoring to give money to young companies, including those with only a shred of an idea. They are piling into me-too start-ups that imitate popular Web companies that already received financing. Companies that involve social shopping, mobile photo sharing and new social networking are finding it easy to attract investors because no one wants to miss the next big thing.
Yammer, a system for sending Twitter-like messages inside businesses, recently raised $25 million, while investors reportedly signed a check for close to $30 million for a niche blogging site called Tumblr. GroupMe, a new group messaging app for cellphones, raised $9 million. Path, an iPhone app for sharing only photos on a social network limited to just 50 people, received $2.5 million. Its competitor, Picplz, scored $5 million. And those are just within the last few weeks.
…
Ron Conway, a San Francisco financier who has invested in more than 500 companies, including Facebook, Zappos, Google and Twitter, says he does not think there is any bubble.
“All the start-ups today have business models and business cases that make them viable,” he said in an e-mail. “In 1999 when the bubble happened many companies did not have business models and advertising on the Web was very immature.”
Groupon has walked away from Google’s $6 billion takeover offer, according to a person close to Groupon. The rejection at least temporarily thwarts Google’s efforts to buy the social buying site, which would have been its largest acquisition to date.
…
Google could acquire one of Groupon’s larger competitors, such as LivingSocial, BuyWithMe or Tippr.The dissolution is reminiscent of Google’s attempt late last year to purchase Yelp, the Web site that lists reviews of local businesses. Google walked away from that deal for reasons that were never explained. The offer for that proposed acquisition was said to have been around $500 million.
If completed at the offered price, the Groupon deal would top Google’s $3.1 billion purchase of DoubleClick in 2007.
From NYTimes Dealbook
I’ve been following the Apprentice USA with Donald Trump (and the UK version with Alan Sugar) over the past few weeks. I enjoy the UK version a little more as I feel it has a raw style and less theatrical compared to the USA version. An added bonus is that the UK version goes for a full hour with no ads (The USA version only goes for the standard 42 minutes with no ads) plus it has an additional 30 minute program called “You’re Fired” which interviews the fired contestant.
The last person to get fired on the Apprentice with Donald Trump was Liza Mucheru-Wisner. Another week to go for the USA finale.
Liza gave a list of other lessons she learned from being on ‘The Apprentice’:
- Passion: You have to love what you do to ensure success.
- Learn sales: You have to be your own best salesperson and learn how to sell yourself.
- Improve: Education is the foundation, but it’s not just about the number of degrees, it’s honing your skills and practicing every day to be the best you can be.
- Focus: Dabbling is not productive because you cannot be the best at everything. Focus on one thing you love doing and are good at and you will find success.
- Be tough and courageous: Even when faced with adversity, stay tough and keep your head up. The light at the end of the tunnel may be closer than you think.
- Working hard = getting lucky: Mr. Trump loved to say, “The harder I work, the luckier I get.”
- Trust god & be true to yourself: Never compromise your own personal values and integrity. The freedom of trusting God first is really a true testament to leading a stress-free life.
From AOL Jobs.
Is technology a distraction from focusing? Here’s an article from the New York Times about digital distractions. (Also I found a response blog post from TechCrunch and from SMH)
At Woodside, as elsewhere, students’ use of technology is not uniform. Mr. Reilly, the principal, says their choices tend to reflect their personalities. Social butterflies tend to be heavy texters and Facebook users. Students who are less social might escape into games, while drifters or those prone to procrastination, like Vishal, might surf the Web or watch videos.
The technology has created on campuses a new set of social types — not the thespian and the jock but the texter and gamer, Facebook addict and YouTube potato.
“The technology amplifies whoever you are,” Mr. Reilly says.
…
Sam Crocker, Vishal’s closest friend, who has straight A’s but lower SAT scores than he would like, blames the Internet’s distractions for his inability to finish either of his two summer reading books.
“I know I can read a book, but then I’m up and checking Facebook,” he says, adding: “Facebook is amazing because it feels like you’re doing something and you’re not doing anything. It’s the absence of doing something, but you feel gratified anyway.”
He concludes: “My attention span is getting worse.”
…
At the University of California, San Francisco, scientists have found that when rats have a new experience, like exploring an unfamiliar area, their brains show new patterns of activity. But only when the rats take a break from their exploration do they process those patterns in a way that seems to create a persistent memory.
In that vein, recent imaging studies of people have found that major cross sections of the brain become surprisingly active during downtime. These brain studies suggest to researchers that periods of rest are critical in allowing the brain to synthesize information, make connections between ideas and even develop the sense of self.
Researchers say these studies have particular implications for young people, whose brains have more trouble focusing and setting priorities.
“Downtime is to the brain what sleep is to the body,” said Dr. Rich of Harvard Medical School. “But kids are in a constant mode of stimulation.”
“The headline is: bring back boredom,” added Dr. Rich, who last month gave a speech to the American Academy of Pediatrics entitled, “Finding Huck Finn: Reclaiming Childhood from the River of Electronic Screens.”